West Wing

Ben's adviser also has a job in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and a few weeks ago he emailed out his lab and asked if anyone wanted to do a special tour of the West Wing with him. So last night Ben and I found ourselves here:

It's sort of hard to see, but we are standing outside the entrance to the West Wing, and above the door is a big presidential seal:

You can't take any pictures inside, but it was quite neat - we even got to see the Oval Office, and it looks exactly like it does on TV. The presidential seal was on everything; there were even special White House M&Ms. Also, there were big photos of President Obama everywhere, many of which were formal or inspirational (like the famous one of a young black boy touching the president's hair), but many were also fun or goofy - like him making the "not impressed" face with McKayla Maroney, and one of Michelle giving a press conference with some muppets. We saw the door to the Situation Room, which I hadn't realized was an actual thing. We also got to see the door that led to the residential part of the White House, but that was the closest we came to the President himself.

We got to go to a few other places around the White House as well, like the Indian Treaty Room, which had the most beautiful floors of anywhere I've ever been:

The last place we saw was the press briefing room, which we learned was originally a swimming pool for FDR's polio therapy. The room always looks huge on the TV, but in reality it is really small - there are only 49 seats!

This is it - the whole thing.

Me and Ben taking a dorky selfie in the video monitor thing.

Me and our friend Ashley preparing for a press release.

We ended up not getting back to Philly until close to 1 am, and just in time for a fire alarm in our building, but it was worth it!